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Monday, December 22, 2014

OK. So why are there so many flies in my home/house? I hear you 'scream'.

There can be many reasons you have a lot of flies in your home. Consider this one:

I came home today, the temperature and been up a bit up all day (mid 20 degrees C) and my home is a bit like a hothouse. It was mid 30s in the house when I got home and until I opened the doors and windows.

Then I started work on dinner. I found some fish I had taken out of the freezer a couple of days ago and forgotten about. Thinking it was maybe a bit passed 'eat by' even though it smelled Ok, I decided to put in my kitchen bin. 5 minutes later the house seemed to have an exceptional number of flies.

House Fly

I did four things and now there are no flies:

I took the fish and the contents of the kitchen bin to the exterior garbage bin. - Flies have a sense of smell thousands of times better than ours!

I opened windows to the sunny side of the house. - Flies are naturally attracted more to bright areas and are more likely to fly OUT open windows here.

I lit a an oriental incense stick inside, and a citronella candle on the terrace outside the main open door - flies are deterred by smoke, including citronella.

I turned on a pedestal fan - this helped circulate the smoke and create disturbed air currents which are also deterrent to some flies.

Other reasons I might have had flies in my home would be something had died in the house and blow flies had found it, multiplied and emerged from it, it is autumn and cluster flies have decided to over winter in my home, there is some rotting vegetable matter or animal matter close to my home, or there are blocked drains and fruit flies are breeding in the fermenting liquid in the drains. There are some other possibilities but the former are the most likely in New Zealand.

Your joke as reward(?) for reading my post:

A woman walked into the kitchen to find her husband stalking around with a fly swatter.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Hunting flies," he responded.
"Oh! Are you swatting any?" she asked.
"Yes, three males and two females," he replied.
Puzzled, she asked, "How can you tell which are male and which are female?"
"Three were on a beer can, two were on the phone."